


The Carceral Algorithm

by orphan_account



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 06:17:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15309261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In the new age of Android Freedom Connor is left with a Deviancy he didn't want and a purpose that held no meaning. On the run from both himself and Cyberlife's ever watching eye Connor stumbles upon a series of posed inconsistencies.





	The Carceral Algorithm

**Author's Note:**

> I am very bad at synopsis.  
> Also, this was a rewrite of a fic I posted couple weeks back and deleted (The Carceral Algorithm) .
> 
> Please let me know if you find any errors or tags needed to be added.  
> Thanks for reading!

“So,” Kamski crossed his legs while leaning back to grab the cup from Chloe. He grinned as he took a sip, “tell me what you know.” The air was humid and cloying, the pool humming a quiet tune of heat the scent of chlorine. It bathed the edges of the room a soft blue.

Connor sat opposite of him in the stiff and squeaky leather chair. One eye leaking fluid, joining a growing puddle on the marble floor. The stump of his right arm grew heavy and wet through the knot of the hasty tourniquet. A long surgical laceration ran down from the middle of his diaphragm ending right at the clasp of his jeans.

The air only grew heavier, his vision going fuzzy at the edges like a photograph burning at the edges. The rhythmic drip of his blood hypnotizing as he gazed past Kamski’s greedy eyes, past Chloe’s vacant stare, and to the frozen ice capped view outside.

Where should he start?

Outside the clouds grew heavier, darker warning of an impending storm of snow and sleet. It contrasted the choking humidity inside, the neat even lines, the order and function that this room served.

There was only one logical place to start. He was concerned of the loud clanging in the background though that dripped away with the blood loss. He forced his slow slump to a stop and started a haltingly painful trek up. Connor was gasping by the time he sat up and let his head fall back against the back of the chair. Too exhausted to move. Kamski wouldn’t care about the lack of eye-contact, and Connor didn’t think he’d be able to move again without assistance.

Now, where did he start?

He closed his eyes.

That was obvious he would start with what he found.

He found he couldn’t pull the trigger.

The two Androids clutched one another, rain reflecting the oil-slick distortion of the artificial lights onto their skin. The last thing he saw were their hands clasped together as they disappeared into the night.

He found fear.

A visceral type of pain that couldn’t be seen nor calculated into neatly filed arrays. A bright flash followed by a bang. The blonde Android slumped down, leaving a smear of blue splattered across the metal behind it. Its’ last fleeting whisper of pride at dying for a cause it believed in. He felt none of that except the abrupt void. It stunned him to witness a second after life and before termination had consumed. That caused him to stumble--to doubt.

Through that he found Jericho.

And then he found Markus.

And then he woke at the Garden.

“Don’t disappoint me, Connor. This is your last chance.”

Then he found looming dread that followed him, nipping at his heel, up the stairs, out the door into the biting chill of the roof. It blanketed him as he stared through the scope, lining up the shot. Ice coating the insides of his artificial lungs as he breathed in. Out. In. Out and steadied the scope.

That’s where he would start.

* * *

The vulture like news-copter circling the final stand was the confirmation he needed. Even though a cursory glance down would confirm, again, it as Markus’s merry band of revolutionaries. Connor pulled the scope away and shook his head. The remote EMPS the FBI stationed to prevent Android communication sent an annoying high-pitch whine through his head. Down below the Deviants were busy reenacting a last stand. They were boarding themselves in with benches, garbage cans, and abandoned cabs. Some would call it honorable, Connor called it desperation, but that would be an opinion he wasn’t supposed to have.

Briefly, Connor wondered what Hank would call it. He didn’t have to wonder for long as the man himself appeared. There were some words exchanged. But the general idea that Connor gleaned from Hank’s yelling was, simply, that Androids wanted life. That humans were on the wrong side of history, mistakes were being made.  Connor realized Hank trying to appeal to the slim chance that he was…aware. It was admirable but nevertheless useless, “I’m not alive, Hank.”

“I saw you. At Kamski’s you didn’t kill her—”

“An error in my code.” He said too quickly as his grip tightened on the butt of the rifle. Hank’s eyes flicked down once noting the grip as Connor tried his best to revert to something resembling calm. This was treading too close to an area Connor was doing his best at ignoring.

“Get away from the ledge.” He said gesturing with his drawn weapon.

“Or what, you’ll shoot me? I thought Android lives mattered to you.”

“I’ll shoot you if I have to.”

There was credit to be given to Hank’s trigger control. He really was a human that valued life even if he didn’t value his own. So, he shoved salt into an old, festering wound and spoke about Cole. Connor noticed the twitch like Hank’s mind had already pulled the trigger. “An Android killed your son, Hank. And now you want to save them?”

To Connor’s surprise Hank was vehement in his disagreement, a human had ended his son’s life. Not an Android. That went against everything Connor had gathered from their interactions through the month.

“Why don’t you shoot then?” The words popped up in his mind and out of his mouth before he could fully analyze why he had said it. But once it hung in the air the rest was easier to say, “Even if you did another Connor will take my place.” He spread his arms, “just like I replaced the one you knew.”

If Connor wasn’t currently standing, goading a man into shooting him he would have laughed at Hank’s expression. The slow dawning realization that his current model wasn’t the one that deviated.

“Bullshit.”

What?

“You’re still you. You got his memories, the choices he made and you’re still hesitating.” And then like he was working through a case Connor wasn’t privy to added, almost as an afterthought, “You’re scared.”

Connor launched the rifle at Hank who grunted as it hit him. He dodged the reflexive shot and tackled Hank to the ground. Even though he had the advantage of agility and lack of pain receptors Hank put up a good struggle. Though it ended with Connor’s hands strangled in Hank’s vividly patterned shirt. The only thing anchoring Hank to the roof and away from the ground six-stories down.

Hank had a cut dribbling blood into one eye, the corner of his lips smeared with blood from a busted lip. He spat a glob of red-tinged saliva and asked through blood stained teeth, “Was it something I said?”

He pulled him in closer, not enough to give Hank the leverage to reverse their position but enough to make a point, “I am going to accomplish my mission.”

And as if mocking him he spread his arms, “Moment of truth then. What are you gonna do?” Connor held him studying the bright red bruising before the eventual purpling that would settle in even after death. _Let him go and complete the mission_ , A voice with Amanda’s commanding presence whispered. _This is your last chance,_ it threatened. If he was a machine a last or first held no consequential threat. It wouldn’t have sent a shiver down his spine or the tensing in his legs to run from a danger he couldn’t see. It wasn’t rational, no logic to it. Yet, he found himself hesitating. Grip refusing to loosen itself from Hank’s clothes. The whine in his head grew higher in pitch, static raking down his eyes as the sound of shattering glass assaulted his ears. As if a thousand frequencies were squealing at once he heard a voice rise above it all. It warbled speaking over and after each other saying the same thing:

OBEY.

Yes, that’s right. He was made to obey—

\--but he made a choice. Not him, his predecessor did but that was him also, wasn’t it?

OBEY.

It was him and it wasn’t him. Up here. Above the mess he was both separate and contingent to the fighting below. And he had to decide: what was he?

Connor let go.

* * *

A small, gentle hand pressed against his face tipping it up. He twitched awake unfamiliar with the tenderness of it. His vision was lazy, seeing echoes of a blur in front of him like he was viewing a corrupted recreated crime scene in broken slow motion. The hand around his jaw grew firm, pinching his mouth to a slack open. A bottle was tipped into his mouth, he choked once sending the fluid back out in a messy splutter.

The grip on his jaw never wavered only growing firmer. He tried to shift away, “Please stop moving, Connor. Elijah would prefer you not waste his efforts.” When his vision finally decided to cooperate, he saw the calm, placid blue eyes of Chloe watching him. One hand gripping his face the other an open bottle. Once it had deemed him cooperative it continued the steady stream of, what he now realized was, Thirium.

Kamski watched the exchange fingering the edge of the now empty glass he held. He craned his back to grab a tablet, brows furrowing at what he saw.  Connor turned to try and see what he was reading, the familiar click as the world around him slowed and gridded itself in the blue of his HUD. The article had a scrolling title, a video playing soundlessly in the background of the screen. _Cyberlife could not be reached for a response—It has been noted the noticeable drop in share prices --_ The hand on his face tugged him back to the lip of the bottle, “Please, stop moving,” it chided and continued the stream.

By the end of the second bottle Connor’s biosynthetic readings weren’t in the red. Which wasn’t saying much since he was still close to scrap heap but leaps better than his earlier recycle ready status. She already had another bottle of the Thirium opened before Kamski interrupted, “Chloe, what’s his status?”

“He is at 47%, Elijah. Should I continue?”

Kamski frowned down at the article before replying with a dismissive hand wave, “It will do, thank you Chloe.” He continued reading more as Chloe recapped the bottle and walked off to a hidden door. It hissed closed as she disappeared along with the empty bottles Connor hadn’t noticed she took with her. Silence had descended once again. Outside it was snowing, most likely howling as the storm descended upon Detroit.

When he finally pulled himself away from the luring storm he found himself ensnared in Kamski’s stare. Tablet discarded carefully on the side table, “I miscalculated the volume of Thirium loss,” then he smirked, “a _human_ mistake.” He chuckled at irony only he found the humor in as Connor waited.

Connor knew the scales tipped away from him here. He had no true leverage except one; one that Kamski was aware of but didn’t know of what. A person with one secret or a million would always insist they had nothing to hide. Connor studied Kamski as he did the same from his lazy lounge, head resting on a proffered hand. This he knew: Kamski wouldn’t shut him down without first determining the risk he posed. Not because Kamski feared some sort of implication nor public retaliation. No. It was because he was intrigued by a fascination stemming from sheer arrogance. A mettle of arrogance that led Cyberlife to a net worth of 200-Billion within 3 years of its founding. This was nothing more than another footnote in a future best-selling autobiography one would buy and never read. Even as he sat here bleeding staining the stark opulence he didn’t feel worried nor offended at the thought that Kamski was humoring him. It didn’t change the fact that Connor knew something he didn’t keeping the duo in a delicate stalemate.

Kamski uncrossed his legs and held his glass up as Chloe poured another finger of amber liquid. He took a sip as Connor did his best to keep the near human exhaustion out of his expression. “You’ve told me what you found. I asked what you know.” He finished, setting the glass down onto the metal side table with a clink. “You prioritized your mission,” he surmised leaning forward, “you killed him,” he goaded.

Connor swallowed the lump in his throat and the sudden catch in his chest. “I know my mission.” The words came slow, careful like it would break if he spoke it without care, “And he wasn’t part of it.”


End file.
